Dishonest technician characters sometimes resort to vague, senseless "technical" babble to make up "serious problems" in the inner workings of a machine and offer to "fix" them for a high price.

When technobabble is used to justify a plot development, it's a Hand Wave. When it is used to solve a problem, it is a Polarity Reversal. When it is used to add to the genre feel, it is Narrative Filigree. Due to its historical use and abuse by sci-fi writers, Technobabble is nowadays played more and more often for laughs or parodied in some way.

Examples

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Advertising

The latest commercials for Verizon FiOS TV/Internet service star a technician explaining the benefits of the service to a curious kid who spotted a weird light in his truck. The boy then repeats this technobabble to his dad (word for word!) to entice him to get the service.

Detergents

How many times did you see an ad for a laundry detergent with "intelligent molecules"?

In the UK, there was a TV advert making a big deal over "perborate" — sounds advanced, but sodium perborate is such a common bleaching agent in detergents it's like making a fuss over caffeine in cola.

There's a commercial on in Canada selling some kind of laundry detergent that boasts about its "acti-lift technology". So does one in Spain.

Every commercial for shampoo, face creams, etc that make up any old scientific-sounding mumbo-jumbo to sound like they are terribly advanced and especially effective. Lampshaded in the shampoo commercial that points out "Here's the science bit."

Yuki Nagato: A localized, non-corrosive amalgamation of asynchronous space is independently occurring in restricted condition mode. Kyon: It almost sounds like you're flipping through a dictionary, pulling out words at random.

Combattler V had many blatant examples. In an episode, a court is judging Combattler is too dangerous to be controlled because it is made of super-alloy (chogokin) and powered with electro-magnetic energy.

In the manga version of the battle versus Jinray S1, Professor Yumi explains Jinray's electrical discharges generate an electro-magnetic field around Mazinger that disrupts the power feeding Mazinger and breaks down the Pilder's controls. He also warns that, should the electrical tension increase too much, Mazinger's mechanisms would melt.

In the episode in which Minerva-X appeared, Professor Yumi theorized that she was made of super-steel.

UFO Robo Grendizer: In an episode of the first season, the Vegans plot attacking during an eclipse and luring Duke to fight in the eclipse's umbra because the lack of solar waves will disrupt the flow of the Applied Phlebotinum that fuels Grendizer. Hence the Humongous Mecha will run out of power and will be rendered defenseless.

proceeds to shot out little exploding pellets that in no way affect Suzaku's oncoming Nightmare-frame.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is also infamous for its technobabble. It doesn't just feature babble about actual technology but about meta-physics as well, straight down to talking about things like "ego barriers."

Episode 20 had the best one when Shinji's been absorbed by Unit 01 and they're trying to get him out. Problem is, he doesn't want to come back.

Maya: The ego border is frozen in a loop. Ritsuko: Irradiate the wave pattern from all directions... It won't work. The signals are trapped in Klein space. Misato: What does that mean? Ritsuko: It means we failed. Abort intervention, reverse tangent plug! Return additions to zero. Aoba: Destrudo reaction in old area! Pattern sepia! Hyuga: A change is confirmed on the core pulse too! + 0.3 confirmed! Ritsuko:Maintenance of the status quo is top priority, prevent backflow! Maya: + 0.5... 0.8... It's odd, I can't stop it!

Fuyutsuki and Gendo Ikari were experts in "metaphysical biology" (You got philosophy in my science! You got science in my philosophy!) before going military. In other words, the Eva universe had a field of science devoted to things like the Angels even before the Second Impact.

One of the most straightforward examples of this trope is in the fact that the MAGI must verify every Angel is "Blood Type BLUE" before the Evas can attack them. The fact that most Angels are several stories tall and shoot laser beams from their mouths isn't enough of a tip-off, apparently.

Subverted in episode 24 as Kaworu starts rattling off Expospeak until Shinji interrupts him with "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

Episode 13 is probably one of the best sources for this, as it focuses less on the pilots and more on the technicians, Bridge Bunnies, and Ritsuko. During the Angel's first attack sequence, we hear all kinds of Techno Babble, such as in this scene, just as the attack commences:

Shigeru Aoba: We've got an unidentified intruder! Someone's hacking the sub-computer! I'm tracing it! Makoto Hyūga: Ah, not now, they're coming in C-Mode! We can't stop 'em! Shigeru Aoba: We've got to unfreeze the barrier! Open a decoy entry! Technician: Decoy entry has been avoided! Shigeru: T minus 18 seconds 'til trace completed. Technician 2: Spreading barrier. Technician: Barrier has been penetrated! Shigeru: Open a second false entry! Technician: Opening another false entry! Makoto: No human's capable of this! Shigeru: Trace completed! The hackers are in this building! It's under B-Wing...IN THE PRIBNOW BOX!note "Pribnow Box" is a real thing in science, but it's not a place anyone could "be" ... it's a pattern in a DNA sequence that essentially tells enzymes "start here." Correction: actually, in-universe the "Pribnow Box" is the name given to where the Simulation Bodies are stored.

Tenchi Muyo!: The infamous "Mihoshi's Fairy Tale" episode of the original OVAs,e in which Mihoshi claims the Big Bad in her story was stealing "ultra energy matter" for nefarious purposes. Scientist Washū demands to know just what the hell "ultra energy matter" is, and Mihoshi nervously handwaves it away with a Shaped Like Itself explanation that leaves Washū fuming.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gets some in the second half with the bio-computer. The only person who can understand a word of it is Leeron, and then only half. The show doesn't even try taking it seriously-generally, the ultra-dense technobabble spouted by the bio-computer is either ignored or boils down to "All this I'm saying doesn't really matter because you're just going to break physics anyway, you jackasses."

A Certain Magical Index is quite fond of this trope, as well as the sister trope Magibabble. Most of the espers have a somewhat plausible explanation for their powers, but a lot of times when you look too close, the science starts to fall apart. That being said, the fact that every esper is explicitly a Reality Warper with a very limited skillset helps gloss over the physics goofs. And since the method to create espers was literally invented by an evil wizard, there's another explanation if it's ever needed.

In Liar Game, Akiyama uses this in the prelims to the fourth round to explain how he can tell who is "Infected" and who is "Normal". He's actually faking the entire thing, but he does it convincingly enough that everyone believes him, allowing him to proceed with his plan.

Guilty Crown takes after Evangelion in that it uses a lot of biology-themed Techno Babble, most of it misapplied or completely nonsensical (intron-RAM, anyone?). Unlike in Evangelion it's uncertain if the trope was being subverted or parodied or played entirely straight.

Audio Play

On The Firesign Theatre's comedy album, I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus, the "Wall of Science" ride at the Future Fair is full of very silly technobabble, parodying science documentaries. For example, we learn about "Fudd's First Law of Opposition: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over", which is then used for a babblicious explanation of how a power plant works.

Comic Books

Double Subversion in Atomic Robo. Dr Dinosaur is prone to talking at length about "timevolution" and the unlimited power of crystals. In a lot of comics, this would be business as usual, but here Robo usually yells at him about how what he's saying is complete pseudoscientific gibberish and will either do nothing or kill everyone present. Then it works anyway. This usually makes Robo a very sad robot indeed.

Doctor Akagi was deep into some lecture about the Angel. Shinji tried to listen, hoping she'd offer something to give him hope, but the advanced mathematical diagrams and jargon-laden explanation went mostly past him. The Angel was three nanometers thick? Inverted AT-Field? Imaginary space? The floating sphere was its five-dimensional shadow? What the Hell was a 'Sea of Dirac'? He shook his head.

In the Firefly fanfic Forward, Kaylee actually uses technobabble to scare off a group of suspicious federal marshals who are poking around the ship's engine room, by warning them that poking or moving anything will result in a horrific death via painful-sounding technobabble. They eventually back off and leave.

HERZ: Plentiful, as it was to be expected considering the source material is a Super Robot series. Chapter 3 gave a good number of examples, featuring different activation tests.

Last Child of Krypton: Among the giant robot show elements and the sci-fi-oriented super-hero comic-book elements there is plenty of jargon around. And in the first chapter Rei very nearly calls the trope by name:

She held her breath to dull the pain, and for the second day there was light, oh so much light, and she heard the technicians babbling their coded language of feedback loops and neural connections and the Eva went dark, overwhelmed.

This exchange in Reality Is Fluid between a Cardassian scientist and a slightly Book Dumb* originally a weapons officer, not a scientist Starfleet captain.

Prof. Atani Dukat: By the way, Captain Kanril, can I compliment you on your science officer? Commander Riyannis really knows her astrophysics. I had a good time talking n-dimensional subspace mechanics with her earlier. Capt. Kanril Eleya: Ma’am, I have no idea what you just said but I’ll accept the compliment.

In Beat the Drums of War, an admiral from Starfleet Science starts to explain to Fleet Admiral Jorel Quinn her plan to divert the invading Heralds into a black hole, but he stops her in mid-sentence because he didn't understand her the first time she explained it, either.

Antonio: The tachyon accelerators rely on a delicate balance of fusion and fission- Harry: Antonio! Please. Speak English around me. Not science, and definitely not Chinese.

Films

Forbidden Planet is full of this. Lots of technical-sounding terms and explanations are mixed in with the frequently-wooden dialogue. Some of these might even seem vaguely reasonable in the context of the story, especially if you don't think about it too hard, but much of it seems unnecessary (Morbius might have sought a less dramatic way of assuring Commander Adams that Robby was a Three Laws Safe robot; talk about making a poor first impression).

Weir: Well, using Layman's Terms, you use an immensely powerful rotating magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons, which in turn fold-space time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space curvature becomes infinitely large and you produce a singularity. Now, the singularity... Miller:(exasperated) "Layman's terms"?... Cooper: Fuck "layman's terms", do you speak English?!

Weir then uses a convenient piece of (very attractive) paper to physically demonstrate folding two points of space together — once again making us wonder why he didn't just start with that one.

It was nice to give Hermann Weyl a Shout-Out. Technobabble doesn't usually mention the name of a real mathematician. In fact, the Weyl tensor is a description of spacetime curvature used in general relativity, so its mention is entirely appropriate (even if what comes before and after it is impossible).

Subverted in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. When Elliot Carver comes in to ask his tech guy, Henry Gupta about Bond, he stops him before he can go into a longwinded explanation. He even uses the trope name.

Elliot Carver: What did you find?

Henry Gupta: I hacked into the mainframe at the bank, they're using an SSL 2 encryption, a hundred and tw-

The infamous "flux capacitor" from Back to the Future. A capacitor is a circuit component that maintains a voltage through a charge differential: most simply, two plates of metal separated at a small distance by an electrical insulator. Flux is the integral of a vector field over a surface. Unless the doctor is making up terms and the name itself means nothing, no amount of Fan Wank could possibly reconcile the two concepts.note This could actually count as a Genius Bonus, as the Back to the Future movies often make use of oxymorons (e.g. the title of the films themselves and the name of the setting, Hill Valley), and the conjunctive use of contradictory terms like "flux" and "capacitor" in the name of this device would be an example.

Sev Trek: Pus in Boots (an Australian CGI spoof of Star Trek: The Next Generation). Having found itself outgunned by an alien vessel, the crew of the Enterforaprize resort to their final option — technobabble!

Lt. Regurge: If we manoeuvre around the Makular ship while firing simultaneous blasts of UV radiation and enhanced zeno-treknoan beams, we should take out the pustular emitters and disable their Disbelief Suspension field!

"There's three things you gotta understand. As I said before, the daligonitor is amfilated by the thermotrockle. It's made by its connection with the franicoupling of dernadyne. Even at cruising speed the kinutaspel hepulace is prenulated by the amsometer."

Airport: Capt. Vernon Demerest, played by Dean Martin, stops a know-it-all kid from broadcasting the fact that the plane is turning around: "You have a young navigator here! Well, I'll tell you son... Due to a Cetcil wind, Dystor's vectored us into a 360-tarson of slow air traffic. Now we'll maintain this Borden hold until we get the Forta Magnus clearance from Melnics."

I, Robot had Susan Calvin talk about how robotic brains work using a lot of this.

The 2009 Star Trek movie, according to Word of God, deliberately tries to avoid the technobabble tendencies of its predecessors, in order to make it more accessible for newcomers. On the other hand, we have also learned that Scotty was often using technobabble to intentionally confuse Kirk, and Bones once used medical technobabble to bluff his way past a security guard.

They lampshade it occasionally with the mayor remarking, "Does anybody here speak English?" in Ghostbusters II or with Venkman's "important safety tip" line in the first movie.

Stantz: Tell him about the Twinkie.

Dan Aykroyd, who developed the concept, strove to keep the paranormal jargon accurate, as his father and grandfather were both heavily interested in the supernatural/paranormal.

In The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow does this after receiving his "TH.D" diploma near the movie's end. It appears he's attempting to say the Pythagorean Theorem, but it does not come out right.note The Pythagorean theorem refers to right triangles, not isosceles triangles.

If the Technobabble of Buckaroo Banzai wasn't ludicrous enough, it became moreso in context of the ludicrous non-technobabble dialog and character names.

The Wild World of Batwoman: "Free the others. Use your magnetic electron device." (Judging by what happened immediately afterward, "magnetic electron device" is Batwoman-speak for "hands".)

The low-budget sci-fi movie R.O.T.O.R. is filled with this, and it's all worse than you can imagine. "Is there some good vibration to its molecular tonality that you can utilize?" and "I can’t run a sequential circuitry test without the impulse feed chain." are just two examples.

Star Wars movies tend to mostly avoid this but in Star Wars: The Force Awakens there's some talk about stuff involving anti-matter and such during the big exposition on the Resistance Base concerning how the Starkiller weapon works.

Jokes

An old electrical engineering joke is a fictional device called the "Turboencabulator". Here's a portion of its description:

"The original machine had a base-plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan, the latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar vaneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible trem'e pipe to the differential girdlespring on the 'up' end of the grammeters."

The French equivalent of this would be the sketch "Le Schmilblick" by humorist Pierre Dac.

On Steve Martin's Let's Get Small album, he announces that he's written a joke for the plumbers in the audience:

"This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job, and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch gangly wrench. Just then this little apprentice leaned over and said, 'You can't work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch wrench.' Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, 'The Langstrom seven-inch wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.' Just then the little apprentice leaned over and says, 'It says sprocket, not socket!'"

Played with in Life, the Universe and Everything: Ford murmurs portentously about detecting "eddies in the space-time continuum," and Arthur, not understanding at all, asks, "Who is Eddy then, exactly?"

"And that's his sofa, is it?"

Also played with in the first book and radio series:

Trillian: Zaphod, can we stabilise X zero zero five four seven by splitting our flight path tangentially across the summate vector of nine G X seven eight with a five degree inertial correction? Zaphod: Where did you learn a stunt like that, Trillian? Trillian: Going 'round Hyde Park Corner on a moped.

Isaac Asimov's resubliminated Thiotimoline. Essentially, he wrote a short story which was one long piece of technobabble, as a parody of a paper as might be found in any peer-reviewed scientific journal.

What makes it especially amusing is that it's actually a perfect imitation of a peer-reviewed science paper, since Asimov wrote it as a warm-up exercise for getting back into academics. The only thing about it that marks it as a parody is that it's about a chemical substance that behaves in a completely impossible manner (specifically, a type of carbon molecule that is so soluble that it begins to dissolve before you pour water on it because it's so dense that some of its bonds get crowded out of normal three-dimensional space and into the future).

He was working on his doctorate at the time and tried to publish it under a pseudonym to keep his science fiction career on the down-low (science fiction being a much less respectable field of literature at the time than it is now). However, through an oversight, the story was published under his real name. Towards the end of his doctoral defense, one of his committee members casually asked "So, Mr. Asimov, what can you tell us about thiotimoline?" Fortunately, his committee thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Thursday: We're in the middle of an isolated high-coincidental localized entropic field decreasement. Wilbur: We're in a what?Thursday: We're in a pseudoscientific technobabble. Wilbur: Ah! One of those.

Further lampshaded in One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing, which reveals that any technological object in the Bookworld more advanced than a toaster is built by Techno Babble Industries.

The Head of the Alchemists' Guild speaks like this in the Discworld novel Reaper Man, which is appropriate given the Alchemists are like early Discworld scientists.

Also seen with the Smoking GNU in Going Postal, who are to the mechanical telegraph system known as the "clacks" what RL hackers are to the Internet. When Moist listens to their explanation of ...the Woodpecker, about the only words he recognizes are things like "chain", "disengage", and "the".

One of E. E. “Doc” Smith's Lensman books, Galactic Patrol, includes a very amusing technobabble explanation for the unlikely properties of one of his favorite inventions, Duodecpylatimate, AKA Duodec, the ultimate chemical explosive, though you do have to understand scientific notation to figure out the joke. Duodecpylatimate is described as "the quintessence of atomic destruction," whose power is second only than a nuclear explosion and has few of the drawbacks of atomics. No radiation danger, easy to handle, simple to use, powerful and easy to detonate. "Duodec" is a solid chemical explosive composed of 324 atoms of heptavalent nitrogen combined in 12 linked molecules of 27 atoms each.

Parodied in Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series, where wizards incorporate technical terms from science and engineering into their arcane rituals. Lampshaded in that Jon-Tom immediately spots the connection, but turtle wizard Clothahump merely comments that the wizards in his (our) world must simply use comparable formulae for their spells.

The titular Bastard Operator from Hell is a master of coming up with what an informed reader can tell is nonsense, but which the boss will consider to be very impressive.

Dan Brown, in Angels & Demons, describes a battery charger that would make anyone with the slightest knowledge of electronics cringe; its over-elaborate design includes servo-coils, the part of a disc drive which moves the heads. And this from a character who's supposed to be a physicist? Why didn't she use a simple constant-current source like everyone else?

In the same book, the assassin apparently makes his cell-phone untraceable by splaying a ferret over it. Let's hope the local animal protection society never got to hear of that.

In the classical novel by Alessandro Manzoni "The Betrothed" it is used by don Abbondio, a clergyman. He's just trying to find an excuse to convince the young Renzo to postpone his marriage (he has been threatened by the henchmen of a local noble to do that) and starts sprouting nonsense in Latin to impress him. Renzo, although, doesn't fall for it and just roars "Enough of your Latinorum!".

Copious amounts can be found in Deep Storm, although half the time it's simplified by Dr. Crane's exposition parroting.

The Star Wars Expanded Universe combines this with Hold Your Hippogriffs. Constantly. A joke about lightbulbs becomes one about stormtroopers changing glowpanels. (And for the record, it just takes one blonde to change a glowpanel, but he doesn't even have to touch it.)

Lampshaded by Q in the Star Trek book I, Q. Q is visiting the Q Continuum, which is in a state of utter chaos. He describes it in technobabble, true to the tradition of Star Trek. After his lengthy, jargon-ny description of what the heck's going on, he proceeds to hang the lampshade:

Q: This must sound like a lot of technobabble to you. In layman's terms: The shit had hit the fan.

Aubrey-Maturin: Stephen Maturin invokes this trope, due to the highly technical nature of running large sailing ships: "Your mariner is a splendid fellow, none better, but he is sadly given to jargon."

Destination: Void by Frank Herbert is largely filled with this.

John Scalzi's Redshirts mocks this (and numerous other Star Trek tropes) viciously. The science lab is regularly required to work under impossible deadlines. But they have the Box: it looks a lot like a microwave, and you can put any sample to be analyzed into it. Let it run for a while, then hand the results off personally to the Spock Expy (no simply transmitting it by computer) while spouting a load of nonsense, and it magically works. It makes no sense and the lab's crew hate it because it insults their understanding of science, but they do it because that's how it works.

In The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, Carolyn tries to do this, but Scott isn't buying it:

"Do you know what a gravity well is? It's kind of like that, except in reverse, and it only works on certain people." "I have no idea what that's supposed to mean." "Hmm. OK, think of it this way. Do you know how microwaves work?" "No." "It's based on microwaves." "Oh, wait. I just remembered. I do know how microwaves work, and what you're saying is bullshit."

Dax: The magnetic deflection of a runabout's hull is extremely weak. The probes will never be able to detect it. O'Brien: They will if I outfit them with a differential magnetomer. Dax: A differential magnetomer? O'Brien: Mm-hmm. Dax: I've never heard of a differential magnetomer. How does it work? O'Brien: I'll let you know as soon as I finish making one.

Another Deep Space Nine episode, "Q-Less", plays it more blatantly. As they're busily attempting to solve the cause of repeating (and intensifying) power drains and graviton bursts, Q is harassing the crew, and pops in with the statement, "Picard and his lackeys would've solved all this technobabble hours ago!"

(Warning beeps)EMH2: Doctor, some... thing just went off line. EMH: ... Specifically? EMH2: The secondary gyrodyne relays in the propulsion field intermatrix have depolarised. EMH:(rolling eyes) In English! EMH2: I'm just reading what it says here!

For all its overuse of technobabble generally, Voyager did manage to have fun with this at times. From the season 3 finale:

B'elanna:Perhaps I can [beam Chakotay, Tuvok and Kim] out if I get a skeletal lock on them... Janeway: A "skeletal lock"? B'elanna: You know, lock on to the mineral concentration in their bones. Janeway: ... I didn't know you could do that. B'elanna: I... came up with it just now.

Lampshaded and parodied in all incarnations by the Trek-themed Voltaire filk "U.S.S. Make Shit Up".

TNG also loved to use the "inverse tachyon pulse" routed through the "main deflector dish" which managed to do completely contradictory things like work as a sensor and be an unstoppable death ray.

Oddly enough, since a tachyon is a theoretical particle that can only move faster then light, an inverse tachyon anything would just sit there...maybe...

Maybe they meant anti-tachyon, as in an antimatter tachyon. That could function as a sensor (interstellar FTL radar, if you just measured the tachyon's age and momemtum somehow), and anything involving antimatter could easily be an unstoppable death-thing.

In its earlier seasons, TNG also avoided technobabble. It didn't turn into the quantum-phase-modulating-fest we all know and love until two things happened: (1) Gene Roddenberry died, and (2) the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual was published, which contained more technobabble than you could shake a 9-Cochrane warp nacelle at.

Andromeda actually averts this most of the time, using particles, materials and weapons that exist in "hard" sci-fi, with the exception of the Slipstream Drive and the Energy Beings in later episodes.

Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1 rarely gets to finish her technobabble, since she's cut off by her superior, Jack O'Neill, whenever he can.note Impressively, Amanda Tapping actually broke down all of Carter's technobabble and put it into terms she could understand. She understands every word she's saying - well, as well as anyone who doesn't have a degree in astrophysics can, anyway.

Daniel tends to do this as well, with Jack cutting in a second in to stop him. Which is good since he has been shown to rant.

Lampshading of this has happened a few times, typically consisting of another character getting aroused and asking Carter to repeat what she just said for their own ends.

As O'Neill once noted, "You want to be careful about using the word 'how' around her."

Once O'Neill moves to Washington, Carter gets to ramble on a bit more than she's used to. The episode "Ripple Effect" has an impressive technobabble monologue that lasts at least 45 seconds during which a few characters glance at Daniel who just shakes his head as if to say "No, you aren't supposed to understand what she's saying, don't worry about it."

Inverted wonderfully with

Daniel: "Ok, let me put that a different way...."

Carter: "No, Daniel, you're right. You can't actually see it. Not the singularity itself. It's so massive not even light can escape it. But during the eclipse we should be able to see matter spiralling towards it."

O'Neill: "Actually, it's called the Accretion Disk."

Daniel: "Well, I guess it's easy to understand why the local population would be afraid of something like that...what did you just say?" (stunned)

O'Neill: "It's just an astronomical term."

Carter: "You didn't think the Colonel had a telescope on his roof just to look at the neighbors, did you?"

O'Neill (to Teal'c after the two had walked ahead): "Not initially."

In the time loop episode "Window of Opportunity," after a few loops it is O'Neill's use of technobabble that helps convince Carter and Hammond that he knows what's going on.

Hammond: What do you make of all this?

Carter: Well sir, when was the last time you heard Colonel O'Neill use terms like "subspace field" and "geomagnetic storm?"

Hammond: Good point.

Carter: And he actually used them correctly...for the most part.

And in "2001" O'Neill warns another character not to ask Carter a question starting with the word "how", as the answer will contain technobabble.

In the episode 200, we get the following exchange.

Carter: We're running another diagnostic, but right now we're stumped. The power's getting through to the capacitors, but for some reason the charge isn't holding. That's causing the control crystal to send feedback into the interface and reset the programming code of the base computer's dialing protocol.

Martin Lloyd: Whoa! That was awesome! Say that again.

Carter *annoyed*: No!

Martin: Oh. Uh, ev-everybody, take five. I've got to get that down before I forget it. The power getting to the flux capacitor but feedback is not feeding back into the feedback face... This is gold!

Parodied in Stargate Atlantis episode 38 Minutes when Kavanagh states that they "Can't rule out a catastrophic feedback in the drive manifold!" Doctor Weir replies with "Without the technobabble please"

And in "The Eye" Weir tells McKay to use technobabble to confuse their captors and stall for time.

Weir: Well, find another problem with it! I—tell him that the power-loop interface isn't jiving with your walkabout! Something!

McKay:(incredulous) Isn't jiving?!

Used in Firefly, usually by Kaylee — whose technobabble is more "mechanic's shop-talk" than "high-end physics." Mal tells her to put in "Captain dummy-talk".

Also subverted in Ariel - Simon teaches Mal, Zoe and Jayne some scripted medical jargon (with difficulty) to get them into a hospital. When it turns out they don't need it, Jayne decides to spout it anyway rather than let his efforts go to waste.

Doctor Who invented modern technobabble; to give every example would take years. In "The Girl in the Fireplace," the Doctor calls something a "spacio-spatial temporal hyperlink". He then admits he made the term up because he didn't want to say "magic door".

Inverted in a later episode, "Blink", of the famed Timey-Wimey Ball line, by the same writer as "The Girl in the Fireplace". The Doctor names a machine he builds "the timey-wimey detector" and describes its operation as "goes 'ding' when there's stuff."

Steven Moffat expressly hates technobabble, on the basis that only anoraks would enjoy watching it.

Also subverted in several Fourth Doctor episodes, primarily focusing on the reason for the change in dimensions inside the TARDIS. Usually goes something like this:

In typically sardonic fashion, Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor, said that sounding very sincere while babbling meaningless technical jargon was a part of the role that his former job - a Catholic monk - had strongly prepared him for.

Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor) had trouble dealing with technical talk of any sort so eventually the writers threw in the towel and had everything come out "Reverse the polarity". Only one time did he include 'of the neutron flow' ... the Master was suitably shocked at the suggestion. Perhaps he had no idea what it was, either.

In "The Doctor's Wife":

"Well actually, it's because the Time Lords discovered that if you take an eleventh-dimensional matrix and fold it into a mechanical then..." *Rory touches two wires together and they spark* "Yes, it's spacey-wacey!"

Rory identifies a device that was just used on them as a "miniaturization ray." Since he spent the last season reading scientific journals, Amy assumes that he's figured out how the machine works — but nope, he's just going by the fact that someone used a ray on them, and then they were miniaturized.

Doctor: Now, it looks like the proto-anodysing discorporators have short circuited the molecular quark overload.

Companion: Is that difficult to fix?

Doctor: No, but it's very difficult to say!

And then:

Doctor: No good. I'll have to use the dimorphic inertia system. (Companion hands over a car crank, which he accepts, while baffled that she knew what he was on about.)

The Twelfth Doctor continues Steven Moffat's general aversion to techno babble, such as in "Flatline" when he invents a gadget for dealing with a group of two-dimensional aliens that he names the "Two-dis" (a pun on TARDIS).

In "The Girl Who Died," he confirms a long-held fan suspicion by confirming that the phrase "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" is indeed meaningless.

"The scransoms above your head are now ready to flange. Please unfasten your safety belts and press the emergency photoscamps on the back of the seats behind you." John Cleese is a great pilot.

Battlestar Galactica subverts this in one episode where Col. Tigh disapproves, in so many words, of Dr. Baltar's "weaselly technobabble".

Baltar had previously used reams of technobabble on Tigh to demonstrate his fake Amazing Cylon Detector. Lucky that his hapless victim turned out to be a real Cylon. Ironically, the equally-technobabbly but functional detector later built by Baltar is currently considered fake.

Ronald D. Moore has gone on record several times saying that he hates using technobabble. In fact, the avoidance level is so high that it takes four seasons to show the Galactica's engine room. Most of the basic tech remains a Black Box.

That said, some of BG's aversion to technobabble goes a little bit too far to the point where sometimes you just don't know how anything works, and it ends up becoming more A Wizard Did It. Especially when it comes to suddenly moving through vast reaches of space with no explanation (and no, I'm not talking about the FTL drive).

It really came back to bite them when the writers actually came up with a real scientific explanation for why stem cells from the human/Cylon hybrid Hera would cure cancer. Moore was worried that it would just sound like gibberish, and the final episode largely glosses over why it works (something about some blood cells being square while others are hexagonal, as far as we can tell). And the end result was many viewers upset that such a huge game-changing moment was given no real explanation.

The miniseries itself had a nice moment which established that the show would not rely on technobabble. After saving Colonial One, Apollo recounts how he used the hyperdrive to create an EMP that disabled the Cylon nukes while making it look like they detonated. The pilot of Colonial One is dumbfounded by this, and Laura Roslin replies "The lesson here is not to ask a follow-up question, but instead say 'Thank you, Captain Apollo, for saving our collective asses!'"

Very common in 24, where most of Chloe O'Brien's lines involve nothing but meaningless technobabble, including incredible abuse of the word "subnet".

An episode in the third season of the series involved Nina Myers transmitting a virus code via cell phone to the headquarters of CTU, and the rest of the episode is dedicated to fix it, by having Chloe O'Brien stating nonsensical technobabble. The creators (Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon) even admitted they made all the tech dialogue up on the spot when they shot the episode.

In another episode, some (cod-) programming is done on the fly and the code appears on the screen. A screenshot is at http://www.technovelty.org/humor/24.html, where forum users note that the code almost makes sense but despite the emergency of the situation Edgar Stiles still found time to embed comments in it. That's dedication to good programming practice, that is.

In fact, the technobabble is so complicated in 24 that numerous actors gave up trying to learn particularly tricky, technobabble-filled lines, and instead read off sticky notes that were pasted on their screen.

If technobabble is used in Red Dwarf, it's a fair bet that it'll be subverted. If Holly uses it, (s)he's just making it up to hide the fact (s)he's no idea what's going on (Rimmer sometimes does this as well); if Kryten or Kochanski use it, no-one will understand a word. Meanwhile, the Cat considers himself an expert on "Swirly Energy Thingies".

Episode "Stasis Leak": The Cat asks "What is it?" when confronted with a doorway into the past. Rimmer and Lister both blurt out technobabble of varying thicknesses before The Cat simply replies, "Oh! A Magic Door! Why didn't you say so?"

From Tikka To Ride:

Rimmer: Do you think it's because the subspace conduits have locked with the transponder calibrations and caused a major tachyon surge that has overloaded the time matrix?

Gwen: So what's that supposed to do? Jack: I'm using satellite tracking data to determine the intra-trajectory of the meteorite. Toshiko: He means he's trying to find out where it's come from. Jack: Hey! Sometimes a little technobabble is good for the soul.

In the first episode, Jack explains how the Perception Filter causes them and the elevator to be unnoticed by passersby.

Gwen: How does it work?

Jack: No idea. We know how to use it, but not how it happens. But if I had to guess, I would say there was once a dimensionally transcendental chameleon circuit placed right on this spot, with wielded it's perception properties to a spatio-temporal rift. But that sounds kind of ridiculous. "Invisible lift" has got more a ring to it, don't you think?

Anytime Angela's doing her job on Bones, expect prolific amounts of this. And all of it will be made-up. Which is, itself, an inversion, as she's the artist in a cast of geeks.

In The Weird Al Show, The Hooded Avenger uses technobabble to explain why Hanson taking flash photography of giant Harvey will make him go back to his normal size.

The Hooded Avenger: No, no, stop! The flash effect from those cameras may displace neurons in Harvey's radioactive aura, damaging his neo-electrical field resulting in a complete and immediate growth reversal! (Harvey shrinks) See? Told ya.

In The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries, there's a painful example in the episode Search for Atlantis. The Hardys are introduced to university archeologists at a dig to find Atlantis. At one point, the site manager asks Frank and Joe how much they know about archeology. Frank starts off innocently enough with "Petrie's system of excavation", a reference to William Petrie, who was responsible for setting standards for archeological work in the 1900s, but did not invent any specific "excavation system". Then Frank babbles on about the lack of "pulse induction readings" and "flux gates", with the site manager commenting that the "volcanic activity" in the area has ruled them out. Considering that "pulse induction" is a metal detector and a "flux gate" is a magnetometer (used to measure magnetism on objects), nothing volcanic would rule out the use of that equipment; Frank further compounds the babble by using the terms as if they were techniques, not equipment. The site manager makes it even worse with a spiel about "plate activity" jumbling the readings...which wouldn't stop any decent archeological team, who would know how to read soil & rock levels despite ancient earthquake activity. About the only thing Frank gets right is a later reference to "Fiorelli's technique", used at Pompeii to make molds of corpses under the volcanic rock.

Two characters in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers were devoted to Techno Babble. Billy (the Blue Ranger and resident Genius who built a Flying Car simply because he could) would rattle off big sounding words leaving the rest of the team to wait for him to finish speaking so they could turn Trini, the Yellow Ranger, who used nice bite sized words to explain everything.

Billy stopped using technobabble in season 2. Apparently none of the new Rangers could understand him. But they still have The Smart Guy use it regularly.

NCIS: Perky Goth Abby frequently has to shoot out ten-syllable words without the slightest break in her speech. During an interview, Pauley Perrette said that just learning all the words is the hardest part about playing Abby. Then we have Timothy McGee...

Particularly bad one in CSI: NY: Lindsay talks about making a GUI interface in Visual Basic in order to find an IP address. Exactly why you need to make a graphical user interface, which is basically a way to interact with a program using visuals rather than text commands, in order to track an IP address is anyone's guess. But it sounds fancy.

Subverted on 30 Rock when Liz and Pete make their presentation about taking the team to Miami — Liz just says a few Buzz Words and nothing else while Pete holds up a sign that says "Miami = Synergy." Jack says it's the best presentation he's ever seen.

Gilina Renaez: "This should bypass the grid, and hook us directly with main control."

Chiana: "Spare me the Techno Babble, Gadget Girl, let's just get on with it."

Like most other things in Farscape technobabble is not only lamp-shaded and name-dropped more than once, but is even deconstructed by Genre Savvy John Crichton.

Shake it Up gave us "Did you use open-source software to save time and the virus was hidden inside it?" Since this actually is meaningful, the Internet was not pleased.

Parodied in Trailer Park Boys while the title characters play around with a model rocket and Ricky puts his own... unique spin on the concept.

"Breaker, breaker, this is rocket ship 27, come in Earth. Aliens fucked with the carbonator in engine four. I'm gunna try and refuckulate it and land on Juniper. Hope you got some space-weed. Over."

Quoth Castle, in an episode of, well, Castle, "Tory found some unscrambled artifacts in the registry to a service-set identifier. [Beat] I don't know what that means either, but she got really excited about it." Amusingly, it actually almost makes sense if you think about it.

Look Around You spoofs the wealth of jargon found in the world of science by making up a host of new words, including fictitious chemicals ("bumcivilian", "segnomin"), laboratory equipment ("Besselheim plate", "gribbin"), units of measurement ("billigram", "quorums per second") and many more.

In one Dilbert strip, the Pointy-Haired Boss asks Dilbert, "Did you know that twenty percent of all microfleems are subradiante?" He keeps telling Dilbert to consider the implications of this until Dilbert submits to his superior knowledge of technological facts. He doesn't actually know what a microfleem is.

The Dilbert website used to contain a random mission statement generator, which bordered on this trope.

Subverted in a The Far Side comic, where one scientist makes the mistake of uttering "The 'T' Word" in a lab. "Hey, could you hand me the... the... the thingy?"

The Firefly Tabletop RPG featured a table that allowed the GM to randomly generate damage to the players' ship. It had two columns, one for technobabble, and one for what this actually meant. They were rolled separately, and therefore one had no correlation to each other whatsoever.

The technobabble column itself came in three parts: the part prefix (Primary/Hydraulic/etc), the part (Stabilizer/Vent/Feed/etc) and what happened to it (Cracked/Jammed/Exploded/etc) requiring three rolls to describe what went wrong when all anyone wants to know is the fourth, which is what it means.

The Adeptus Mechanicus of Warhammer 40,000 has Lingua Technis, a language devoted to Techno Babble. It lets them maintain their monopoly on technical knowledge.

Genius: The Transgression: Actually represented in the rules, and known as Jabir. A Genius who tries to talk about any kind of science will find that they have suddenly stopped making sense.

Spirit of the Century allows players to make declarations about scientific facts their characters know which can help in whatever situation they find themselves in. Since Spirit of the Century runs on the rules of pulp narrative, both players and Game Masters are encouraged to make such situations less about "realistic science" and more about "impressive sounding technobabble."

Paranoia has a recommendation for the GM about this trope: talk fast. If any of the players ask for clarification, tell them that said information is beyond their security clearance. The Paranoia XP rulebook also had a table at the back to randomly generate technobabble-esque medication names

The Fudge Factor Article Building A Better Space Ship states "Unless your players are more scientifically adept then usual, don't be afraid to simply take some cool sounding word and putting it in" on names. Their example is a Phased Ion Rifle.

In Magic: The Gathering, a card from the Future Sight set modified how the player assembles contraptions. Contraptions don't exist. You can't assemble them. There are no rules pertaining to 'assembling' or 'contraptions' anywhere in the game.

This is actually a reference to a past card, Great Wall, which made it possible to block creatures with plainswalk even if you had a plains; at the time, only one creature with plainswalk existed, and even today, with over a hundred thousand cards, less than twenty have or grant plainswalk.

According to Yu-Gi-Oh!Master Guide 4, the advanced technology of the Mecha Phantom Beast archetype includes quantum-output machines. The decoys created by these machines are nearly indistinguishable from the original on radar and are said to be so efficient at drawing away fire, that as long as a single decoy has been deployed, the original machine cannot be shot down.

Theatre

In The Rainmaker, Starbuck first tries to explain how he can bring rain in terms of Techno Babble. Since Lizzie isn't buying it, he quickly changes his approach:

Starbuck: Sodium chloride!—pitch it up high—right up to the clouds! Electrify the cold front! Neutralize the warm front! Barometricize the tropopause! Magnetize occlusions in the sky! Lizzie: In other words—bunk! Starbuck: Lady, you're right! You know why that sounds like bunk? Because it is bunk! Bunk and hokey pokey! And I tell you, I'd be ashamed to use any of those methods!

Older Than Steam. In Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, a couple of con artists are trying to fool some rubes into thinking they're alchemists. Part of the show includes a long, babbling speech about the state of the Philosopher's Stone. Jonson was an obsessive researcher and much of the nonsense is based on contemporary alchemical jargon, but in a way to come across as nonsensical to even the contemporary audience:

Can you sublime and dulcify? calcine?

Know you the sapor pontic? sapor stiptic,

Or what is homogene, or heterogene?

Video Games

Advent Rising: The descriptions for all the weapons are full of techno babble. Quark mind-drives, entropic energy waves, and grav-shielded singularity cores, just to name a few terms.

Blast Processing. note In fact, it has been suggested that "Blast Processing" has an actual meaning: it refers to the Genesis' rather powerful I/O processor, which could offload some work for the CPU. Alternatively, it may simply refer to the system's design approach: it was built around a very powerful CPU, whereas the SNES had a slower CPU controlling more advanced video and sound subsystems. This is the reason why some early SNES games had slowdown issues (devs hadn't quite figured out this novel design), and why polygon-based games ran much better on the Genesis.

Tails has been known to rattle off Technobabble ever since he was finally given a speaking role that revealed he was the team's resident science geek extraordinaire.

Sonic Adventure 2 gets points off, though, for referring to a Bernal sphere (the ARK) as a "Bernoulli sphere."

Molecularly, Tiberium is a non-carbon-based element, that appears to have strong ferrous qualities, with non-resonating reversible energy! Which has a tendency to disrupt carbon-based molecular structures, with inconsequential and unequal positrons orbiting on the first, second and ninth quadrings!

For Command and Conquer 3, EA took things up a notch and commissioned scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to "provide a white paper describing the biophysics of Tiberium, its atomic structure, its method of transmutation, the form of the radiation that it emits, and the way to harness it for powering machinery and weapons — giving it the same treatment as would be suitable for a scientific journal article on a real substance." Actually, an interesting read.

Dr. Judith Mossman in Half-Life 2 has the tendency to speak in technobabble which your character is supposed to understand, and likely does. You however, are not, and likely don't.

This is an actual Skill in Guild Wars, which you earn from the technologically advanced civilization of the Asura. It damages and dazed your opponent.

Similarly, in Final Fantasy Tactics, Orators have a skill called Mimic Daravon that puts enemies to sleep. Daravon is the person who explains the mechanics of the game in the optional tutorial.

Tales of the Abyss likes explaining the exact mechanics behind its magic system, and its explanations can turn into this. When you're discussing the game and it becomes necessary to explain that it wasn't obvious that a character's fonon frequency was 3.14159 because having the ability to channel a fonon through one's fon slots does not necessarily mean that one is isofonic to said fonon's aggregate sentience... yeah.

Gordon Freeman has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. His doctoral thesis is titled Observation of Einstein-Podolvsky-RosenEntanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through NonlinearTransuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array. Basically, shooting low-frequency electromagnetic waves through heavy element crystals to make things teleport.

Unreal Tournament mixes technobabble with a generous measure of Gun Porn in most weapon and item descriptions, so even if bits of it go over your head, you can still be confident of the power it's packing.

Xenogears and Xenosaga are madly, passionately in love with their technobabble. A lot of it's real, about evenly divided between advanced physics, neuroscience, and five or six kinds of Gnosticism (including Jungian psychology, which gets a lot of its terminology from Hermetic alchemy). Admittedly not all of the physics would actually work like that—you can't use quantum entanglement, i.e. the EPR paradox, for a Subspace Ansible, for example, and you probably couldn't use the Collective Unconscious as a hyperdrive, either.

Appears all over the place in the Ratchet & Clank series, frequently with Big Al. For example, when the eponymous duo encounter him in Marcadia's defense facility during the third game:

Ratchet: How can you use the city's defense network to play a video game?! Al:Simple. I bypass the security server with a 626 hex matrix adapter and reprogram the graphics sub-processor. Ratchet: No, no, I mean- urgh! Clank, you speak, uh... "nerd". Clank: It appears you have a feedback loop in the induction coils of your DB-3 signal processor. Al: Impossible! I ran a recursive checksum on the signal matrix."

Fallout 3 has you take the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test as sort of a way to set up what kind of character you'll be playing with. The first question reads: You are approached by a frenzied Vault scientist, who yells, "I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber!" What's your response?

One of your responses can be: "But doctor, wouldn't that cause a parabolic destabilization of the fission singularity?"

Or you can just say "Yeah? Up yours too, buddy!"

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is even worse with the technobabble than the movies that inspired it. "Charged nucleon jackets" and "fermion absorption rings" are but two examples.

This is one of the cruxes of the Co-Op MultiplayerMobile Phone GameSpaceteam. Each player has a procedurally generated control panel for the fictional Cool Spaceship and a series of instructions, but the instructions cannot always be carried out on their panel; the intended result is for players to yell absurd jargon at each other: "Inflate Nanoflange!" "Set Triweaver to 2!" "Rotate Posidome!". For additional amusement, the tasks and panels sometimes involve mundane tasks like "Rearrange Deckchairs," "Suspend Disbelief" and "Darn Socks."

In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora and his friends have a hard time understanding what Tron is saying when they first meet him, because of this trope. As time goes on, Tron becomes easier to understand as a result of gaining emotions due to his friendship with them. Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance implies that this could be the result of the program getting a heart.

In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Hope's given explanation for Lightning's having to return to the Ark every day at 6 A.M. is that it's to "regulate the time distortion." It's never really explained just what this means.

Borderlands has numerous examples of this, mostly in mission briefings. An example is a mission from Patricia Tannis:

"Tannis needs more parts to ensure the protection grid holds on her device’s ecto-containment unit, safeguarding against total protonic reversal, which would be extraordinarily bad"

Visual Novels

Subverted completely with Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and the sequel, Virtue's Last Reward. The abilities of espers and those who throw their consciousnesses through time could have easily been handwaved with vague explanations about telepathy and mental time travel. Instead, everything is explained in complete length, pulling from real world scientific theories and phenomena, such as morphegenetic field theory, Minkowski space, the many-worlds interpretation, and schrodinger's cat, to name a few. In the end, everything in the series seems to have gone out of its way to purposefully avoid using technobabble at pretty much any point, despite it being very sci-fi-like in nature.

Web Comics

Subverted in Kid Radd, where the otherwise brilliant Mad Scientist has a huge blind spot for technobabble. "The sensors are picking up some stuff!"

Intragalactic did a parody of technobabble in a footnote here: "It wouldn't seem like you could chart space on a two-dimensional screen like this. Until you remember that at large distances space functions as a flat surface due to the exponentially increasing effects of gravity as we near the Planck time. Subspace anomaly nanoprobes wormhole."

Also in Muertitos by the same author here: "The trauma has rendered her catatonic, clinically vegetative, and medicine saline doctor viral!"

Lampshade firmly hung in Keychain of Creation with the character of Nova, an Alchemical Exalt. Specifically, in her fight with Misho here. Misho's usually the go-to guy for Magi Babble about Magitek, but Nova's particularly bad about it, especially since her stuff is more "tek" than "magi."

Lampshaded in thisFreefall strip, among many others. If it includes Florence there's a chance technobabble is going to appear sooner or later. She may be speaking Engineer again (though what she actually said there actually makes perfect sense if you are a nuclear engineer). However, this strip proves that the robots aren't above it either.

Surprisingly, the third example is just Jargon, although it is mixing religion and quantum mechanics, which is always a bad idea.

Parodied in Homestuck: while most of the characters are more likely to use Buffy Speak for anything technical, the Sburb installation screen includes such interesting phrases as "Realigning Cartesian mandrills".note A direct parody of The Sims, which uses similarly meaningless phrases during its loading screens.

Awful Hospital has this as a major plot element. Most characters encountered talk about "spiraling" and "sub-perceptual zones" with the same level of casualness most people would talk about dirty dishes and late night television. Slowly, the readers begin to (sort of) understand concepts like "layers" and "branchination", but the realms are just too massive to understand everything, so we will probably never know what "gleaming" is or what "furlers" actually are.

Web Original

The Whateley Universe runs on Technobabble, since it's a universe of mutant superheroes and supervillains, with a Cosmic Horror Story backstory. All the major power classifications have their own Technobabble for how they work. There are even rival Technobabble factions: most Psi researchers think that "magic" is just a form of psionics; most magical adepts think that "psi" is just a form of magic; etc.

One mutant power in particular literally runs on Technobabble: so-called "devisors" make up a Technobabble explanation on how the piece of wondertech they're building would work, and then impose new physical laws on the device so that it actually does work.

Amy: These readings are all weird, because we seem to be stuck in the time-space Nerf Gun continuum, and the only way out is if we make a pyramid out of— Artemis: I think this bitch is just making shit up now. Amy: You guys never listen to me anyway!

SF Debris repeatedly calls these out in his Star Trek reviews. He goes one step further in his review of the Voyager episode "Prototype", where he explains the method by which Technobabble is created: take two unrelated, scientific-sounding terms, and stick them together. He proceeds to demonstrate it by creating some examples, with captions giving a possible explanation of what the complete term would mean, including:

Volume Symbiosis: A biological link between two different shapes.

Temporal Osmosis: The mechanism by which the movement of water controls the passage of time.

Quantum Test Tube: A special kind of test tube whose contents can only be known by looking at it.

Simian Beta-Decay: The mechanism by which an ape will break down into a number of smaller monkeys by emitting a high-speed electron.

Orbital Mitosis: The act of a planet splitting and forming two smaller planets that share the same path around a sun.

Schizophrenic Thermodynamics: The mechanisms behind energy-transfer found in the environment around batshit-crazy lunatics.

Relativistic Gentrification: The economic phenomenon associated with the re-vitalization of inner city neighborhoods as those neighborhoods approach the speed of light.

Another Voyager episode prompted a rant about this, culminating in Chuck demanding to know if Tom Paris has developed aphasia.

Explored in an episode of Extra Credits in a decidedly non-gaming-related episode. Daniel Floyd points out the issues inherent in justifying The Force with midi-chlorian count.

What I'm saying is that you can't lend credibility to your story just by using science-words. Using real science, and allowing that to be the floor that helps you ground your universe in an internal logical constancy; that's why Science Fiction works, not just because it sounds science-y. Once you've got that underpinning, you can explore all the interesting things that shake out of it, which is what makes science fiction so great, and on the flip-side the limitless freedom that technology provides futurefantasy is what allows it to deliver such compelling stories and explore such a wealth of ideas. Don't hamstring it by entangling it in a web of techo-jargon. So yes, that is why technobabble sucks.

Farnsworth: Just as I suspected. These robots were buried in improperly-shielded coffins. Their programming leaked into the castles wiring through this old, abandoned modem allowing them to project themselves as holograms. Hermes: Of course! It was so obvious! Farnsworth: Yes, that sequence of words I said made perfect sense.

Really, they use (and parody) this all the time, in a variety of different ways.

Code Lyoko is also chock full of it. Suffice to say it's never a good idea to let Jérémie explain how his newest program works. Or let Aelita answer questions about simple mathematic concepts.

One of the most famous examples is the line uttered by the Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons in the episode "Das Bus". Notable for being actually clear, logical, and transparent to a trained networking engineer: in layman terms, he has a dial-up modem, he wants broadband access, and in order to do that, he needs a router that can fit inside his private network. Here's the full quote:

Megas XLR has a running gag of having Future Badass Kiva saying some sort of technobabble, only to have it shrugged off by lazy bum Coop.

Kiva: What's the big deal on drinking a Slushie anyway? Coop: What do you drink in the future to freshen up? Kiva: We drink a balanced electrolytic hydrating fluid. Coop: ...That must be some grim future you have!

Alternately played straight and played with in Teen Titans. You have five teenagers living/fighting crime together. Cyborg is a half-robot and thus knows a lot about computers and machines, despite not finishing high school; Raven grew up meditating and reading ancient magical scrolls; Starfire is an alien with substantial knowledge of science and her own world's culture but will ultimately be stumped if you ask her a question about Earth's history, culture, and language; Robin is a Bad Ass Normal raised by Batman who makes all of his own toys; and Beast Boy, as Raven so artfully put it, learned his history from a cereal box — and the rest from TV. Get this group together and you're in for some pretty interesting conversations.

In one episode of Justice League Unlimited, Supergirl finds herself in the future. Being from a similarly advanced civilization herself, she slips into technobabble (for our ears) at least once.

In the first episode of the Thanagarian invasion Justice League Unlimited, one of the Thanagarians suggests to the Martian Manhunter that he wouldn't understand the technology they are using. He replies with a burst of technobabble indicating a deeper understanding of what's going on that she obviously expected.

Superman: How can we stop it? J'onn J'onzz: There is one possibility. To halt the process, we would need to create an Einstein-Rosen bridge to drain off the infecting anti-fusion matter. Flash: Create a what to do what? Hawkgirl:Make a wormhole to suck away the bad stuff.

In Dave the Barbarian, this is parodied in an episode in which Dave suggests solving the problem with convenient technobabble. Candy responds that convenient technobabble levels are dangerously low.

Also seen in one opening of Family Guy where Peter is watching TV and a stand up comedian (Dennis Miller) comes on and delivers this line: "I don't want to go on a rant here, but America's foreign policy makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first Battle of Antietam. I mean, when a neo-conservative defenestrates, it's like Raskolnikov filibustered deoxymonohydroxinate." Which in turn leaves Peter with the amazing comment "What the hell does "rant" mean?"

A Bugs Bunny cartoon featured this with Marvin's "illudium Q-35 explosive space modulator", to blow up the earth because it obstructs his view of Venus.

Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time uses this when describing her scientific work. In one episode, a romantic rival to Finn is just as conversant in Techno Babble as she is.

Dexter's Laboratory used this often, a famous example is in the very first episode where Dexter and Dee Dee are fighting over a device that turns people into animals.

Dexter Now, do you understand...?(device turns him into a pig) That by combining the positive and negative polarities in sucrose radium,... (turns into a yak) We can excrete the elements from any variety of zitgaforme! (turns into a gorilla)And unificate them with the superlative repercussions of the magnetic ospium! (turns into an ostrich) Thusly, this machine should not be USED by a... (turns into a hamster) ...person of lower intelligence, such as...! (Dee Dee, still in frog form, laughs with the device in hand) Dexter: You're not listening to me! (grabs the device and turns Dee Dee into a tiger) Now, pay attention!

Real Life

Essentially every product or idea sold on the basis of the word "quantum." Products that predate quantum mechanics — homeopathy, for example — are offered with a lot of convincing-sounding, but nonsensical 'data' about superposition and parallel dimensions.

Attempts to use technobabble to lend a veneer of plausibility to pseudoscience often have the opposite effect on people who actually know anything about the scientific disciplines being abused. One example — apparently the ills of the world are caused by the bond angle in water changing; not only would this not happen without a change in the fundamental constants of the universe, but it's something everyone would notice because it would affect the freezing and boiling points of water. The same people then go on to talk about how boiling water drives off the electrons because its natural state is electrically charged, at which point anyone who has a basic knowledge of chemistry and physics would realize it's nonsense, and anyone who has a degree in either subject will be laughing, facepalming or both. Most people don't, which is why it's so popular to use.

A telling sign is to try and find any New Age pseudoscience or product that actually explains how "energy" or "vibrations" help the person using the product in a way that can be verified or confirmed with science.

The UK free newspaper Metro once published a letter from a reader lamenting that "processed foods have no energy", whatever that was supposed to mean. The following day they published another letter, pointing out that in fact processed foods contain altogether too much energy, and that's why there's an obesity crisis.

in fact, any common material can be made to sound dangerous if you know its IUPAC name. IUPAC nomenclature, the standard for naming chemical compounds, has a certain air of danger around it, which of course was played up in the DHMO hoax.

It's quite common for scientific terms to be abused; for instance, sugar-free "energy" drinks don't contain any energy in the scientific sense ("stimulant drink" would be a more accurate name), and many products are claimed to "contain no chemicals", which on the face of it means that they're made of nothing but pure energy (salt, suger, and water are all chemicals).

The ICAO Accident Prevention Manual mentions an incident where a private pilot once wrote the authorities asking if he could save money by mixing kerosene with his aircraft fuel. They sent back a letter stating: Utilization of motor fuel involves major uncertainties/probabilities respecting shaft output and metal longevity where application pertains to aeronautical internal combustion power plants. Pilot's reply: "Thanks for the information. Will start using kerosene next week." Answering by cable this time, the authorities responded: Regrettably decision involves uncertainties. Kerosene utilization consequences questionable, with respect to metalloferrous components and power production. Cable reply from the pilot: "Thanks again. It will sure cut my fuel bill." Response by telex (a network that can reach both parked and flying planes directly) within the hour: DON'T USE KEROSENE. IT COULD KILL THE ENGINE, AND YOU TOO!

A great example of why you should avoid uselessly long words. (Regrettably decision involves uncertainties -> Actually, we're not sure about that decision.)

Also, at no time until the very last one was the answer "no", or was it even suggested that the effect on shaft horsepower might be "reduced to zero midflight" and that the effect on metal components may be "cause them to fail". This therefore also serves as a warning against Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Delusions of Eloquence.

If the aircraft in question is turbine powered, such as a jet, its normal fuel is made up almost entirely of kerosene anyway.

Aviation likes to use technobabble, and if you talk to a pilot about their daily flying routines, they will play this trope up to the hilt. For example, a pilot might tell you they need to check the OAT in order to find their Density Altitude in order to turn currently indicated KIAS into a KTAS value, on an E6B, in order to accurately report their ETA to the nearest FIC in order to remain legal based upon guidelines set forth by the ICAO and detailed in the AIM and FARs/CARs. All they're doing is calculating their airspeed in order to see if they'll get to where they want to be in time.

Many troll posts found on various Internet forums have a good dose of this. One of the most famous is the legendary FLAC vs. MP3 copypasta from /mu/:

Hearing the difference now isn't the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is 'lossy'. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it's about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7 kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don't want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange...well don't get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren't stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you'll be glad you did.

Physicist Alan Sokal wrote an article in the journal Social Text that was essentially this, emphasis on "babble". He did so to prove that the humanities division would accept anything.

A number of supplements talk about how wonderful it is that they contain DNA. As does every life form on Earth.

This tends to happen a lot with companies who have a large list of products and they tend to abbreviate everything. Usually happens with tech companies and military contractors. Some businesses will keep a database of "corporate lingo" for new hires.

Management and marketing will often come up with terms and use buzzwords to make themselves sound better.

You can expect plenty of technobabble on sites related to the sketchier forms of online day-trading (binary options, forex, etc) in order to obscure the fact that it's basically gambling with a house edge that would make casino operators green with envy.

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